A MANCHESTER Library has paid over £97,000 to buy a collection of books and manuscripts which includes three books that they gave to author George Gissing as a prize in 1874.

MANCHESTER University Library has spent £97,700 of Lottery cash obtaining a collection of George Gissing's books and manuscripts, including three books it gave to him as a prize in 1874.

Novelist Gissing (1857-1903) studied at the forerunner to the university, Owens College, before being expelled and sentenced to a month's hard labour by magistrates after stealing money from the pockets of his fellow students to help a prostitute, whom he later married.

The John Rylands University Library used a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund to ensure the literary archive remained in the UK.

Gathered together over 30 years by collector Christopher Kholer, it includes several leaves of a draft of Gissing's novel Verandila, unpublished family letters and the three volumes of Virgil given to Gissing by the college as a prize for Latin.

Dr Stella Butler, head of special collections at the library, said: "Gissing is an interesting figure for a number of reasons.

"Firstly, for Manchester he was a student at Owens College and his papers provide us with a good picture of what college life was like here in the 1870s.

"He is also important in a literary sense because his novels reflect the changing role of women in society in the late 19th Century. He could be called a kind of feminist of that era.

"There is some interesting correspondence in the Kholer collection, including letters to his brother, to his son and several literary figures, such as HG Wells and JM Barrie."

The library already held a substantial collection of more than 200 items relating to Gissing, including examples of his magazine writing as well as a number of first editions and both biographical and critical material.

Dr Butler said: "The addition of the Kholer collection will extend our understanding of an important figure in Victorian culture and an outstanding alumnus of Owens College."

Gissing was born in Wakefield and attended Owens College from 1872 to 1876, before being caught stealing to help Nell Harrison.

On his release from hard labour he left for America, returning to England a few years later. It was then that his career began and he went on to write more than 20 novels, including his most famous New Grub Street.

He also made substantial contributions to English literature, writing one of the first critical studies of Charles Dickens; first published in 1898, it remains of interest to Dickens scholars today.